


The Blazing Convent of Pleasure

by ClaraWieckSchumann



Category: The Blazing World - Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle, The Convent of Pleasure - Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle
Genre: 17th Century, Crossover, F/F, Gay, M/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraWieckSchumann/pseuds/ClaraWieckSchumann
Summary: The story starts after the ending of Margaret Cavendish's play "The Convent of Pleasure". The Prince turns out to still be a woman - the Empress of the Blazing World.Together with the Emperor, the Duchess of Newcastle, and the Prince, the Lady Happy travels through the different worlds looking for a place where their same-sex relationships are accepted.
Relationships: The Lady Happy/Empress, The Prince/The Emperor
Kudos: 2





	1. The Revelation

Oh Duchess, Margaret Cavendish,  
I must apologize  
Since I have written against your wish  
A fiction - how unwise,  
So please forgive, if you read thereof - 

I’ve made your works a queerer thing:  
For every Girl a Girl to love,  
For every Prince a King.

I

“Come, noble friends, let us feast before we part”, said the Prince, and so they did. Everybody was merry and agreed that this couple was by far the gayest to ever have been married. Everybody but one: the prince himself. He was supposed to be the happiest man in the country, yet his happiness was merely a facade. He was able to hold it up until the night, when with a sorrowful eye he turned to his wife.  
“My Love, what is it?”, said she, “How come you are not as happy as me, for whom this is the happiest of all moments?”  
“Oh, my Dearest”, he answered, “there is a secret I cannot keep from you any longer. I am not who you think me to be.”  
“What? Are you not a noble Prince? My Love, I could not care less - I would still love you in the harshest poverty, I would love you be you a Prince or a beggar.”  
“It is not about my riches. In fact, they are greater than those of a mere Prince, since I am an Empress.”  
“An Empress!”, Lady Happy cried, “so you are a woman still!”  
“Yes, my Love, I am a female soul in a man’s body. This soul has travelled here from another world, of which I am Empress.”  
“Another world? But how is this possible?”  
“You see, there is more than one world, the worlds are stacked on top of each other at the poles. Bodies must make their way through hidden and difficult passages, yet souls can travel freely from world to world. This is how I came to you, looking for freedom, but finding love.”  
“But what about the man’s soul? Does he not love me? Where is it while you, your royal Highness, reside in this man’s body?”  
“I have switched souls with this Prince so that his soul in my body can be the Lover of my dear husband, a gentle, yet lonely man - you see, in our world, we are the only humans, the rest of the population is made up by bird-men, fox-men, worm-men and so on. The spirits tell me that they are indeed very happy together, my husband may have never been merrier.”  
The Lady Happy, however, was still full of questions: “I am happy for the fate of your husband, yet: How did you know of my convent? Did the spirits tell you that as well?”  
“My dearest friend, the Duchess of Newcastle, a most wonderful woman out of this very world, told me about your convent. I could not resist a place of such endless and absolute pleasure, without the many pains of men.”  
“There aren’t any nice men in your world either?”  
“My Love, the only acceptable men are those that don’t desire our sex.”  
“I have never heard of such men.”  
“That’s because in this your world, my Dear, they have to live in secrecy.”  
“And your husband is such a man? He does not love you or any other woman, but only his lover?”  
“Yes, he is one, and the husband of my friend too.”  
“Where is this friend now? Why isn’t she in my convent?”  
“Her soul is in my homeworld, leading its people during the time of my absence while her body dwells not far from here, in deep sleep at the Duke of Newcastle’s estates.  
But, my Love, please answer me: Do you love my soul or my body? For if you love only my body, I shall weep, but if you love my soul, I shall rejoice and be the happiest I have ever been.”  
“Oh, but my Prince, pardon, Princess, nay, Empress, I do love you for your soul, and I am not in the slightest disturbed by your revelation. Actually, I am delighted, for when I first fell in love with you I thought you to be a woman, and now finding out that this is still true I am relieved to not have given my heart to a man.”


	2. From England to the Pole

After this big but joyous reveal the Lady Happy and the Empress of the Blazing World celebrated their love the whole night through. The next day the Lady Happy looked at her wife lovingly and said: “Dearest, last night I dreamt you’d taken me with you to the Blazing World, making me your Empress. Oh, how I would like to reign on your side! How I would like to see the fiery stars in the sky of which you told me between you nightly kisses!”  
“My Love”, replied the Empress, “what you dreamt at night I think about at day ever since I laid my eyes on you! How happy I am your longings are the same as mine!   
Yet, we will have to plan this well. If we do return together to the Blazing World, we shall take the Prince’s and the Duchess’s bodies with us, for only then can we all live happily together, every soul in their own body.”  
“How right you are, how smart you speak!”, said the Lady, “But how shall we attempt to enter your world?”  
“To go into the Blazing World we shall head north. We must first pass through the world in which I was born, and when we reach the north pole of that world, we can enter the Blazing world.  
We will need a strong ship that can break ice, also warm clothing and God’s blessing. I have managed to get into the Blazing World with only the last, so if we have the additional equipment we shall be just fine.”  
The riches of the Prince and the inheritance of Lady Happy were more than enough to buy an adequate ship with a well-trained crew. Just two months after their wedding they packed up their most valuable belongings and started north. Bringing the Duchess’s body was only a minor difficulty - they could pay the crew enough to not have any questions asked regarding what appeared to be a corpse.  
The journey from the English World to the Empress’s native world was long and harsh, despite their excellent preparations the group had to fight many adversities. For instance, when they drove past Sweden, they were for their heavy equipment mistaken for a ship of war and were attacked, only narrowly escaping captivity and almost destroying the tender unity of England and Sweden in the Spanish war against the French.  
The biggest problems arose when they reached the first ice: While our friends were protected from the harsh northern conditions, the crew of the ship made several attempts to mutiny and were only held back by the promise of more and more money. However, at one point, even that did not protect the ship’s peace. Harshly thrown out onto the thick ice, the Prince’s body with the Empress’s soul, the Lady Happy and the body of the Duchess were left alone by the crew. Only a few items of food could they gain, not by the sympathy of the shipmen, but by the beautiful Lady Happy giving them each a kiss, a price she gravely paid.  
“We must not lose all hope”, said the Prince’s mouth, “we must see the good things: Without their mutiny, we would have to make a difficult plan how to slip into the next world without the crew. Now we are alone, and no one will be able to follow our trail.”  
“Oh my Dearest, I admire your optimism, yet we are three mortal bodies, one of them soulless, in a desert of ice with rations only for a few days. Alas, we will die out here!” After she had spoken these words the Lady Happy sank down on her knees crying.  
“Oh, you shall be called Lady Miserable!”, the Empress-Prince cried. “When we go down, we will do so fighting. I don’t have a weak woman’s body, my body is that of a man trained for battle. I will lead us through this misery, my Love, I promise you that.” And with these words she lifted up the light body of her friend the Duchess and began to march further north. Reluctantly the Lady Happy took the few supplies they had and followed her wife.  
They could not say how long they fought their way through the ice, for in these latitudes the summer days hardly leave any room for the night. The cold and the hunger were the only enemies they had to face during this part of the journey, yet were those dire enough to make them suffer strong pains and without the protection from God, who loved these children of his for their pious and gentle manners, this story might have come to a sudden and tragic end.  
Yet, with a helping and leading hand from heaven, they found their way to an arch of ice which lay almost unrecognizable in between two large snowdrifts. This arch led into a deep tunnel, whose end our friends were not able to see and from where warm winds were blowing.  
The further they went into the tunnel, the hotter it became. Soon, the ice around them was melted away and let the bare stone underneath it show. After a long march they rested and looked at each other in the scarce light that was left to them. The Lady Happy, full of doubts and fear, asked her wife: “What if we are wrong? What if this is not the right way? Ah, I believe we are truly lost! We will die miserably in the dark. Yes, we won’t freeze to death, but I’d rather peacefully fall asleep in the cold and never wake up than painfully starve in a dark cave! Let us go back outside and rejoice in the brutal beauty of nature, let us go where we can clearly see each other and die with a loved face in front of us!”  
“No, my Love, your speech does not make sense: For I know the world we are headed to, and therefore I can tell you that we are truly on the right path. In my native world, the southest point is the hottest, and since this tunnel leads continuously north and it gets hotter with every step, I can confidently state that we are, in fact, headed to the south pole of the next world!”  
“I will believe you once more, my Dear, for you speak well and are more educated than me. If you are right, I shall be glad, if you are wrong, I shall still thank God for letting me die in the arms of my Darling.”   
After these words had passed they started north again, their legs in pain, the Prince’s arms weary from carrying the Duchess. A few hours of marching later, the light began to return slowly yet continuously. Soon, the warm winds turned into an oppressive heat.  
Finally our friends stepped out of another arch, this one made out of one huge tree, and into a new world. The southern passage here laid hidden in a deep and vast jungle.   
“Oh, how right you were!”, cried the Lady Happy. “Forgive me for not having trusted you. I was being stupid and miserable, yet now I shall be Lady Happy again and live up to my name!”  
Merrily they kissed, the sultry atmosphere did not bother them, the birds were singing in the trees and all was well.


	3. Through ESFI

With new energy they walked through the jungle, again to the north. In this part of the journey their harshest enemies were the bugs, no bigger animals dared to harm this group under God’s protection.  
After leaving the jungle the new problem was of a diplomatic kind: The plan of the Empress was to get the help of her protegé, the emperor of this world, the former King of ESFI.  
With her brilliant rhetoric (and a few bribes) she achieved being granted an audience with him.   
“What is your cause, foreign nobleman?”, the proud Emperor asked. Being an Emperor of a whole world had corrupted his character and made him conceited.   
“I must speak to you in private”, the Empress said. “Please be so kind and send your attendants away.”  
The Emperor, being not only vain, but also, much worse, a man, made it clear that he would, in fact, not be so kind and that if the Prince and the Lady could not speak openly they should turn around and leave right away.   
The Empress, who was spoiled by her time in the convent and not used to the stupidities of men anymore, had very little patience for this most detestable representative of his sex.  
She said: “I am perfectly able to speak freely in front of the world. In fact, I might just tell not just your attendants, but the whole country about how you became Emperor of this world. Yes, your Highness, I do know about the firesto-” “No! I forbid you to continue speaking!”, the Emperor exclaimed. “Everybody out, out, leave this hall, everybody except the two of you!” He pointed at the Empress and the Lady Happy with a shaking finger.  
When the room had been cleared, the Emperor, now rather nervous, addressed the Empress of the Blazing World.  
“I do not know how you gained this knowledge, but I entreat you to keep it a secret. If my enemies, and they are plenty, find out about the magic stones I will lose all my power. I will give you all the riches you could possibly wish for, if you just never speak of the stones again!”  
“I’m not asking much. Just a token, really, a trifle” the Empress said. “All we want is free passage to the north pole of this world. You will equip us with a strong ship and an even stronger crew and we will leave you alone indefinitely.”  
Visibly relieved the Emperor agreed to these conditions, and so the Empress, the Lady Happy and the soulless body of the Duchess of Newcastle safely arrived at the north pole of the ESFI-Empire.  
There they left the ship, sent the confused seamen and their ship back south and made their way to the secret passage into the Blazing world, a passage well known to the Empress by now.


	4. In the Blazing World

The Emperor of the Blazing World had been informed by the spirits about the close arrival of his good friend, the Empress, and looking forward to seeing his Lover’s body for the first time and his friend’s, the Duchess’s body returned to her soul, prepared a big feast, the biggest since his own wedding.  
Our friends were received at the Blazing World’s south pole by the bear men and were safely escorted to the palace of the reigning couple.  
Before we can hear about the joyous reunion, we must take a look at the rules of love and marriage in the Blazing World. You must know, dear reader, that just like in England a marriage was to be only between one man and one woman, the happy love between two women or two men must be kept a secret. Therefore, in order not to lose their crowns and be sentenced to death, the Empress and the Lady Happy, the Emperor and his Prince, had to keep their love secret and hidden from the general population if they did not want to be overthrown by the very conservative and powerful party of mammals (the concept of parties was very knew to the Blazing World, introduced accidentally by the Empress during her attempts to reorganize society).  
Now, after this sad intermezzo, let us return to the feast: soon after all the hellos and how-are-yous were said came the moment for all the souls to return to their original bodies. The Empress was the Empress again, the Emperor (privately) kissed his Lover on his own lips and the corpse-like body of the Duchess of Newcastle sprang back to life when her soul took possession of it again.  
Our friends feasted the whole night through, and when they went to bed the suns were already rising.  
Around noon they all came together again for a late breakfast. It was then when the Duchess, being the brightest mind at the table, started to philosophize: “So, we know of three worlds: The world of England, which is where I come from, the world of ESFI, where you, my Empress, were born, and the Blazing World, where we are now. If we think this through, shouldn't there be another world stacked on top of this at the north pole of the Blazing World? And then yet another on top of that? There might be an indefinite number of worlds out there we know nothing about! Should we not dare to explore these strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations?”  
“My dear friend”, said the Empress, “you truly are a bright thinker! But to what purpose should we do that? What shall be our goal? We are perfectly happy here in the Blazing World, we are the leading circle and have all we could ever wish for.”  
“Do you, really?”, asked the Duchess. “Are you truly happy? Do you not have to live your love in secrecy, don’t you have to hide your true selves from the light of the public world?”  
The Lady Happy nodded: “She is right. I do know this Blazing World only for a few hours, yet does the prospect of never being able to call you my wife in public sadden me. But, dear Duchess, do you really think there could be a world where woman may love woman, where I can be gay and happy with my love?”  
“Well”, answered the Duchess, “I have talked to the spider-men, this world’s mathematicians, a lot while you were away and they have introduced me to the idea that if there exist infinite options of something, that thing must exist in all possible forms. Therefore, if there are infinite worlds, there must be one of each kind, and that includes one where you shall be happy.”  
The Empress’s eyes were full of hope when she said: “Oh, how wonderful your dreams are! There is one easy way to find out about such a gay world: Let us question the spirits, for they know about all the worlds!”  
When the spirits were called and asked about a world like the one painted by the Duchess they went quiet for quite a while. Then, finally, one of them spoke: “You see, the thing is… The thing is that we spirits… We are not exactly as knowledgeable as you think. Like, we told you about the different worlds and stuff, but actually we can only travel between this Blazing World and the one south from here.” If spirits had bodies, they would have collectively blushed.   
The Empress was confused. “But you said you could travel freely wherever you want? How come I only hear about your restrictions now?”  
A different spirit reluctantly answered: “Well, you must understand, being a spirit can kind of suck. You don’t have a body, you cannot eat, you cannot sleep, you just hang around in the air waiting for some person to ask you something. Of course we try to make our lives more interesting. Being a spirit is ninety percent mysticism. All those ghost stories, all the tales about divine whisperings? That was us. This is what we do all day. And night. As I just said, we don’t sleep. And pretending to be all-knowing was, like, super fun. But we don’t. Harold over there” - Harold waved, even though no one could perceive it - “Harold only knew about the Duchess being a really good scribe for your Kabbalah because he once got lost on her husband's estates in England when he tried to get the main hall qualified as a haunted place. So, yeah, we fooled you. Sorry.” And with that the spirits - some of them giggling like schoolgirls - flew away.  
The Empress looked like she could not decide whether she was angry, disappointed, amused or simply confused. Finally, she settled for amused and broke into laughter, in which the others joined in. When they stopped laughing with hurting stomachs the Lady Happy was the first to speak up again. “I do think it will be worth it to go and discover the next worlds. We might not find a place for our love, but we certainly will find adventure, and that, I dare say, is much better than sitting on our royal behinds each day for the rest of our lives.”  
The Empress and the Duchess were somewhat offended by this slight take on royalty, but had to agree that their lives might have been a little too comfortable.  
So it was decided. They would go north (for the southern worlds they already knew two of) and leave the Blazing World to its own.  
Since this is the last time we will dwell in the Blazing World let me give you a quick look into the future of the planet: After the Emperor and Empress left without a word, a civil war broke out between the mammals and the alliance of bird- and fish-men. This war was not won by anybody but led to the division of the world in two parts: The main continents inhabited by the mammals, the oceans and their islands inhabited by the bird- and fish-men.  
While the mammals have continued the monarchy, with the head of the lion-men as their new Emperor, the bird- and fish-men built a democracy with a two-party system. This division and tender peace continues to this day.


End file.
